There's a light in all of us

Harpers speech a few episodes back about how her trauma traumatised her and didn’t make her stronger, versus Yasmin talking about metabolising her trauma and becoming the very thing that traumatised her…

thinking about how industry chooses not to show a sex scene between yasmin & harper… industry has no qualms about showing graphic sex, but in this show, it’s almost always transactional. it’s cloaked in power and pain and greed. the vulnerability required only means the revelation of weaknesses to be exploited later. but in this moment yasmin & harper have finally dropped all pretenses. they’re not quite equals but they see each other and they choose, over and over, to love each other. and maybe they did officially get together offscreen, or it will be shown in future episodes, but this moment was about the romance, at least for now. industry didn’t need to show anything more than them holding each other, existing together, being happy and honest with one another for once. no transactions made, no goods or services exchanged.

nothing can describe the palpable relief I had at seeing Yasmin and Harper kiss but not fuck like this show does understand their relationship so well

what i love about yasmin & harper is that they really do try to protect each other in their own ways but it's just not how their business works, despite their best efforts they cannot protect each other in a way that seems to come to fruition. also love how yasmin in a way craves harper's respect. she wants harper to see that she's clever and her choices right, and has the authority to deserve it (re: should i call the security). she rejects the truth in harper's face but then proceeds to prod hayley for information, questioning everything & asking henry to do the same because she knows one person who'll truly try to protect her is harper. she's done that before and she knows she's tried to do & also failed many times and she's doing that right now too. but also she won't acknowledge this infront of harper. they make me INSANE